


No Eurydice

by AuthorMAGrant



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andreil Week 2018, Day 1 prompt - mythology, M/M, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 21:39:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15128354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorMAGrant/pseuds/AuthorMAGrant
Summary: One shot written for Andreil Week 2018's Day 1 prompt (mythology). Andrew contemplates Hades.





	No Eurydice

Andrew was used to hell. Contrary to everyone’s opinions -- everyone except Bee, who understood him more than he could accept at times -- no one had thrown him into it. They’d pushed him to the threshold, left his broken and bleeding body on its doorstep. But he was strong enough to know what he wanted. He crawled in on his own. He settled there, made it his own space, decorated it with smoldering cigarette butts and empty pill bottles and knives littered across the stony ground like macabre diamonds. He got used to the whispering voices haunting him, their taunts, their orders, their sick mindfucks, and he learned to tune them out.

He had some visitors. He kept a chair ready for Bee’s weekly visits. Of the Foxes, Kevin was the most comfortable with him, drowning in drink and panic, clenching his shattered hand around his racquet’s handle as if that could somehow delay his inevitable return to the world of sunlight. Aaron would drift in and out like a ghost, hatred and regret in his eyes. Nicky would call to him from the cave entrance, unsure of his welcome. Renee enjoyed visiting, bringing him gifts and commenting on his décor; if he were capable of regret, he might feel it every time she apologized for needing to go before leaving him behind. Coach stopped by on occasion, long enough to glance into his hazel eyes and see the sobriety clinging around the edges, before vanishing again. One trip was enough for the others, a quick jaunt to Columbia before they turned tail and ran from the deeper shadows.

Andrew didn’t mind. He had never wanted to be saved. He was no Eurydice and he had no ear for music anyway.

Then there was Neil. Abram. Nathaniel. The pipe dream. An infuriating contradiction Andrew couldn’t quite wrap his head around. Predator and prey. Murder and reincarnation. Darkness and light. He didn’t know the boundaries between worlds, didn’t respect Andrew’s absolute rule over this hellscape. He lounged comfortably in the liminal spaces, content to make do with what he had, owning nothing but a ragged cloak of dreams too thin to ever be called armor.

He ruined everything.

He overheard the whispers and spoke back with a crooked grin, bloody promises and fatal secrets that silenced the voices. He wrapped his cloak around his shoulders and wandered into the farthest caverns, ignoring Andrew’s orders to stop. He returned over and over, wounded and limping, with that damn tattered cloak fluttering like a flag of victory.

Andrew only had to follow after him once. He found Nathaniel huddled in the outer darkness, lost for the first time, and reached out his hand.

“I told Neil to stay,” he said.

So Neil reached back and they crawled out of that pit together.

One morning, Andrew lifted his head and saw his world rearranged. Arm bands tossed over a chair back. Empty ice cream cartons. Exy gear dropped in haphazard piles. A pair of cats twining around Neil’s legs while he sipped a mug of coffee at the counter and read over his playbook for the millionth time. Andrew blinked against the phantasmagoria, but it remained. Lingered. Dared him to contradict its existence.

Instead, he rose from bed and stole the cup of coffee, forcibly turning Neil’s face away when the small smile wouldn’t leave his lips.

He was no Eurydice and he had never wanted to leave hell anyway.


End file.
